Sleepless
by IvoryAlchemist
Summary: Nobody ever told me grief felt so much like fear. mild T/P Oneshot


I've been pacing the halls at night, anxiously gnawing at the stubs of my fingernails and marching, wide-eyed and exhausted, back and forth before my bedroom door. Sleep is a precious commodity that comes at an impossibly high price: dreaming. So instead I walk up and down the hallway, not thinking, not contemplating, only moving. And it's only really at night that the pain becomes fresh, biting and intense - grief is frightened away by the light of day and lurks in the shadows of my consciousness, waiting, only to spread like a cancer through my mind the moment the world closes its eyes. And it is grief, too, immense grief: pain beyond belief, pain beyond endurance. Sometimes, when the agony becomes to intense for me to bear, I allow myself the relief of crying, still restlessly pacing back and forth with warm water dribbling down my face. It feels good. Like releasing some of the pressure at just the last minute before I explode.

But the grief and loss is not the worst part of it; oh, no, not by a long shot. The worst is the _guilt. _That terrible, unstoppable remorse which infiltrates every corner of my mind, makes my stomach cramp and my chest clench - if only I could take it back, do it over again, if only somebody would allow me _one more chance. _But they don't, so I have to make do with what I have left.

I play little games in my head sometimes while I'm striding back and forth in the inky black of the night, little fantasy numbers all for myself. I imagine what I'd say to him if I could see him again: imagine walking up to him in that impeccable grey suit and venting all my rage, or, alternatively, imagine dropping to my knees and begging for forgiveness - he gives it, of course, freely and without reservation. The games hurt, of course, because the inescapable truth that they are onlyfantasies emphasizes the fact I will _never, ever, not in a million years _see him again.

The pain I feel should be familiar. I know it was only twenty years ago when both my parents died, and I should remember this agony like it was just yesterday, but I don't. My parents live in a dusty little cemetery in my mind, cobwebbed in grief and buried under years of denial, with nothing left anymore but brittle skeletons of memories. Whenever I try to recall that night, I involuntarily shy away, skittish of all the pain and fear and rage that will rise up with it. Not so with him. The night he died plays over and over again in my mind like some kind of home video, only this one is horror movie. His voice is clear in my mind, his screams, and then the heaviness of my arms and legs and blackness in the corners of my eyes, but all I could look at was him; his body half-eaten by that horrible monster he created, completely still and white and silent in the darkness of the night. And then that only leads to the questions: awful questions, useless questions that ping-pong around my mind while I duck and dodge and try not to get hit by that ricochetting bullet of truth.

But sometimes, I can't avoid them. Sometimes, when I walk into the kitchen one morning at 8:15 (fifteen minutes after Pepper had wanted me to leave for a board meeting), and I see her sitting there at the counter, sipping at her non-fat latte and nibbling a bagel and scanning over the newspaper, the questions rise up in my throat like bitter bile and push their way past my lips. Sometimes, I find myself spitting out those venomous words, those questions that I _really, truly _don't want her to answer.

"Pepper, do you think he loved me?"

She looks surprised, although it may be because she didn't know I was standing there and I caught her off guard. She doesn't react the way I expect her to - doesn't cringe away from my inquiry, doesn't flinch back and try and cover-up with half-truths and wishful thinking. No, indeed; rather, she smoothes out the wax paper bag her bagel came in with a single hand and then sets down the baked breakfast over it, wiping at her mouth delicately and turning to give me a thoughtful look as though she had been expecting this question all of her life.

"Yes," she replies mildly, "yes, I think he did. I think he loved you as much as he was capable of loving anybody. I think he was driven mad by greed and power, and I think he let the worst in him guide his decisions in life, but I also believe that you were as close a thing to a son as he ever had, and he loved you very much for that."

It only occurs to me later that it was remarkable how she responded so eloquently, so thoughtfully; it was remarkable that she even knew who in the hell I was talking about when I asked the question. But that was later. For now, all I could do was try my best to contain a terrific, searing bolt of pain that started in my gut and welled up into my throat and my face and my eyes, gulping rapidly. I did my very best to keep it under control and hide my loss of composure from her, but Pepper being Pepper she was expecting that, too, and walked over to me calmly. She took me by the elbow and sat me down on the couch, kneeling by my legs and looking at me with all the earnestness and compassion in the world.

"I know you must feel so guilty and sad, Tony. But Obadiah brought this on himself. He backed you in a corner and forced you to make a terrible choice - a choice nobody should ever have to make. And for that, I'm sure you hate him. But I know a part of you loves him, too, and must miss him horribly. And I'm so sorry you're going through this. I'm so sorry he made you suffer through this. But at least you can know you're not going through this alone."

I can't breathe. My chest is cinched closed, and I'm still getting over the disbelief that she actually said his name - the first time anybody had spoken it since That Night. I'm gasping and coughing, my eyes streaming, and she sits down next to me and starts petting back my hair like a child, but I'm in enough agony right now not to care.

"I - I killed him - _I killed him, Pepper!_"

And there it is. The worst three words I've ever had to speak, a verilent and cancerous sentence that has been swirling around my brain for the last few months.

I killed him.

He was my friend, my mentor, my partner; my closest ally and confidante. And I _killed _him; forced to choose between him and me, I chose me.

She pulls me by my shoulders until my head is nestled against her neck and rests her cheek on the top of my head. A long forgotten memory flashes through my brain like lightening - that's how my mother used to cradle me whenever I was sad. "I know, Tony. I know, and I'm so sorry you have to live with that." Her voice is thick with tears unshed, but she's strong and relentless and she understands, thank god. "But _you had no choice. _You did the right thing, Tony, and don't you ever doubt that, okay? You did the only thing you could. You saved me, and you saved countless others. He made you do something horrible in the hopes you wouldn't be strong enough to, but you were. You always have been. In fact, you saved him, too. I don't think he would have ever recovered if he'd killed you. It would have pushed him over the edge. He would have lost every last bit of humanity in him and died miserable and crazed. You saved him from that. You saved him from himself. And for that you can be proud." She sobbing openly now, something I can't seem to do - it's too much for me, to honest and real and I'm just not strong enough for that, I don't care what she says. She always been more man than me, anyways.

"I love you." Strangely enough, those are the only words I seem capable of saying, so I say them. And it's undeniable true, so Pepper isn't in the least surprised. She just smiles.

"I know."

I sigh into her neck and feel safe, feel that grief that was so much life fear starting to transform into simple, manageable sadness. Sadness I can handle. Sadness doesn't drive me up and down the hallways in the middle of the night.

Speaking of which - the accumulated exhaustion of so many sleepless nights seems to fully hit me just then, and I feel my eyelids drooping closed. The fear of the those haunting dreams and the need to work over every detail of what happened, or try to pace fast and far enough to avoid them, is finally lessening. "I'm sleepy, Pepper." I grumble, and she just nods.

"Then sleep."

So I do.

FIN.


End file.
